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Cross-Platform Dilemma
While the newest font technology—OpenType—is cross-platform,
the two major font
techologies in use today—Postscript and TrueType—are not.
This means that if you design a project on the PC you won't be able to
print the fonts correctly on a Mac unless you do some hocus-pocus:
- Use common fonts that are on both platforms (Times Roman on the PC
and Times on the Mac) and format the type using stylesheets. When you
change platforms, edit the style definitions by changing the font name.
(Some adjustments may need to be made to the copy.)
- Convert fonts to outlines. (You can do this using Adobe Illustrator,
Macromedia FreeHand, or within Adobe InDesign.)
- Convert the fonts so that they can be loaded on the opposite platform.
How to Convert Fonts
(PC to Mac; Mac to
PC; TrueType to Postscript; etc.)
One of the major problems working on two separate platforms is how to
deal with fonts.
Fonts that are created for Windows machines will not load onto a Macintosh
system and vice versa.
One of the strategies for assuring fonts will work on both platforms is
to have both versions of the font—PC and Mac.
Converting Fonts Using Macromedia Fontographer
These procedures will help you use the application Fontographer
to convert fonts from one type to another (TrueType to Postscript, and
vice versa) and from one platform to the other.
Procedure
- Launch Fontographer and use the Open Font command under the File
menu (command-O).
- If you can see the font you want to convert, make sure the check
the All Files checkbox under "Files to show in list."
- A window will open showing all of the keystrokes for the font.
- Select the Generate Font Files under the File menu.
- Choose the target Computer and Format type under the "Type of font
to generate" section.
- Make sure you note/choose the location under the "Where to output
the fonts" section.
- Select the Generate button.
- To use the font you then need to make it accessible to the operating
system.
- For Mac OS: You can use Extensis Suitcase to load the font or drag
the font file(s) into the System Fonts folder
- For Windows: Place the font(s) in the Windows/Fonts directory on
the C: drive.
Converting Fonts Use Other Software
There are some font conversion shareware programs available to download
(either at www.download.com or www.tucows.com)
like:
- TransType 2.1.1
[MacOS 8-X and Windows all]—TransType
is a small Mac application that can convert Type 1 and TrueType fonts
between Mac and PC. Unlike other programs of this kind, TransType does
the conversion with full respect to code pages, encodings, font suitcases,
bitmap fonts, and other features specific to the Mac or PC platform.
Commercial applications like…
- CrossFont [Windows 95,
98, NT, 2000, XP]
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